Bob Hunter commentary | Growing pains plague Buckeyes

Wednesday

Dec 2, 2015 at 5:22 AMDec 2, 2015 at 10:06 AM

The Big Ten-ACC Challenge landed at Value City Arena on Tuesday night, which seemed appropriate. Just about every game has been a challenge for this young Ohio State team, and a 64-58 loss to Virginia was no different.

As Ohio State's nonconference losing streak grew to four games " the first time that has happened since the 1957-58 Buckeyes opened with seven losses " coach Thad Matta was asked whether he had ever been through anything quite like this.

The fact that he had to go all the way back to his job as an assistant at Western Carolina in the 1995-96 season says a lot about how difficult the young Buckeyes' start has been.

'You do this long enough, you've been in a lot of different situations,' Matta said. 'I've been 0-7 before as an assistant at Western Carolina, and the team hit its stride.'

For the record, the 2-4 Buckeyes haven't hit their stride. There are signs that they are getting better, but for now, they have to settle for making progress without victories.

After a first half that seemed more like a wallow in the mud than a demonstration of basketball skills, the Buckeyes showed more movement and sharper passing in the early stages of the second half and hit five of their first seven shots from three-point range. The veterans " Keita Bates-Diop, Marc Loving and Jae'Sean Tate " were part of this, and it was a sight to behold. But the touch eventually abandoned them; four straight missed three-pointers, starting with Bates-Diop's miss with 6:48 left, eventually spelled doom.

Is this who the Buckeyes are? Frankly, it's hard to say.

'This is one of those teams where on Saturday if you put a gun to my head and said who's going to be your leading scorer, I don't know,' Matta said. 'What we've got to get to is where everybody is kind of hitting their stride every time we take the floor.'

If it were only on offense, that would be difficult enough. But Virginia made 8 of 16 three-pointers and was 13 of 25 from the field in the second half. The game was close most of the way, and if the Buckeyes had been able to get defensive stops at key times, the outcome might have been different.

Matta has had successful teams that have had trouble scoring, but they could bail themselves out with tenacious defense. This team might not be ready to do that for a while.

Again, the Buckeyes seem to be improving " freshman center Daniel Giddens had four blocks, for example " but it's difficult to watch this without noticing that players are still learning their roles and, in some cases, might still be discovering what those roles are.

'I saw offensive execution tonight I hadn't seen before,' Matta said. 'That was a huge priority coming into the game that we were going to have to have. What I'm trying to get with this basketball team are a few certainties, and hopefully we find those certainties sooner rather than later, because there's when you can start building to get better.'

In the meantime, everything is hard. Scoring is hard. Rebounding is hard. Defense is hard. Even fouling at the end of the game is hard. With the Buckeyes having only four fouls and down by four with

52 seconds left, it took Matta 15 seconds to get one of his players to commit a foul.

'Yeah, but what's difficult is there's so many things we have to get better at,' he said. 'So to take 10 minutes to work on fouling is not something we have time to do.'

Bob Hunter is a sports columnist for The Dispatch.

bhunter@dispatch.com

@dailyhunter

The Big Ten-ACC Challenge landed at Value City Arena on Tuesday night, which seemed appropriate. Just about every game has been a challenge for this young Ohio State team, and a 64-58 loss to Virginia was no different.

As Ohio State's nonconference losing streak grew to four games " the first time that has happened since the 1957-58 Buckeyes opened with seven losses " coach Thad Matta was asked whether he had ever been through anything quite like this.

The fact that he had to go all the way back to his job as an assistant at Western Carolina in the 1995-96 season says a lot about how difficult the young Buckeyes' start has been.

'You do this long enough, you've been in a lot of different situations,' Matta said. 'I've been 0-7 before as an assistant at Western Carolina, and the team hit its stride.'

For the record, the 2-4 Buckeyes haven't hit their stride. There are signs that they are getting better, but for now, they have to settle for making progress without victories.

After a first half that seemed more like a wallow in the mud than a demonstration of basketball skills, the Buckeyes showed more movement and sharper passing in the early stages of the second half and hit five of their first seven shots from three-point range. The veterans " Keita Bates-Diop, Marc Loving and Jae'Sean Tate " were part of this, and it was a sight to behold. But the touch eventually abandoned them; four straight missed three-pointers, starting with Bates-Diop's miss with 6:48 left, eventually spelled doom.

Is this who the Buckeyes are? Frankly, it's hard to say.

'This is one of those teams where on Saturday if you put a gun to my head and said who's going to be your leading scorer, I don't know,' Matta said. 'What we've got to get to is where everybody is kind of hitting their stride every time we take the floor.'

If it were only on offense, that would be difficult enough. But Virginia made 8 of 16 three-pointers and was 13 of 25 from the field in the second half. The game was close most of the way, and if the Buckeyes had been able to get defensive stops at key times, the outcome might have been different.

Matta has had successful teams that have had trouble scoring, but they could bail themselves out with tenacious defense. This team might not be ready to do that for a while.

Again, the Buckeyes seem to be improving " freshman center Daniel Giddens had four blocks, for example " but it's difficult to watch this without noticing that players are still learning their roles and, in some cases, might still be discovering what those roles are.

'I saw offensive execution tonight I hadn't seen before,' Matta said. 'That was a huge priority coming into the game that we were going to have to have. What I'm trying to get with this basketball team are a few certainties, and hopefully we find those certainties sooner rather than later, because there's when you can start building to get better.'

In the meantime, everything is hard. Scoring is hard. Rebounding is hard. Defense is hard. Even fouling at the end of the game is hard. With the Buckeyes having only four fouls and down by four with

52 seconds left, it took Matta 15 seconds to get one of his players to commit a foul.

'Yeah, but what's difficult is there's so many things we have to get better at,' he said. 'So to take 10 minutes to work on fouling is not something we have time to do.'

Bob Hunter is a sports columnist for The Dispatch.

bhunter@dispatch.com

@dailyhunter

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